The Man Who Risked It All by Laurent Gounelle Page A

remarks incessantly about anything or nothing, from the color of my shirts to the amount of time I spent on each interview.
    But the crucial point was the number of recruitment contracts signed. Since our role as salesmen had taken on more importance than searching for candidates, we had been allocated individual business targets, with commissions tied to our sales. Now our department had a business meeting every Monday morning. The decision probably hadn’t come from Fausteri. Very introverted, he hated mixing with us. Larcher must have forced him to do it. But Luc Fausteri was very clever and had succeeded in evading the thankless task of leading the weekly meeting. Larcher managed it himself, which suited him; he liked to be involved in everything. Fausteri made do with remaining silently at his side, playing the role of the aloof expert who only opened his mouth when absolutely necessary. He would regard us with a mildly condescending gaze, wondering no doubt why the simple-minded always repeat the same idiotic remarks.
    That particular morning, I met Thomas, a colleague, in the corridor.
    “Well, we thought you’d died the day before yesterday,” he said, sarcastically.
    If only you knew, my friend . “I must have picked up a virus going around,” I lied. “Fortunately, it didn’t last.”
    “Right. I won’t get close to you then,” he said, taking a step back. “Even if it would suit you all if I was so ill I couldn’t give you the usual hiding at the end of the month!”
    Thomas was the consultant who got the best results, and he never missed an opportunity to remind us of it. I admit his figures were fairly impressive. He was a workaholic who put in impossible hours, regularly went without lunch, and was so focused on his targets that he sometimes forgot to say hello to people he walked past in the corridors. At any rate, he never stopped to chat, except when he had an opportunity to blow his own horn, either by announcing his quarterly results or by telling you that he had just bought the latest fashionable car or had eaten the night before in the trendy restaurant that all of Paris was talking about.
    Everything about Thomas was calculated to serve his image, from the brand of clothes he favored to the Financial Times tucked casually under his arm when he arrived in the morning. Each gesture, each word, indeed everything he owned and did was an element of the persona he had carefully constructed and identified with. I would sometimes imagine Thomas naked on a deserted island without his Armani suit or Hermès tie or Weston loafers or Vuitton bag, without personal targets to reach or glory to obtain or anyone to impress. I could see him sliding into an infinite torpor, as unable to live without others’ admiration as the rubber plant in our waiting room could survive without Vanessa’s weekly watering.
    But in fact, he would probably become the archetypal Robinson Crusoe, adopting the appearance and behavior of the exemplary shipwreck as diligently as he had cultivated that of the dynamic executive. Once he had been rescued by fishermen—amazed by his capacity for survival—he would have returned to France a hero, recounting his exploits of survival on every TV channel, while carefully preserving his eight-month beard and wearing a loincloth like nobody else. The context would change, but not the man.
    “Having a chat, are we, then?”
    Mickaël was another of my colleagues. He didn’t take himself seriously, but he did think he was cleverer than everyone else.
    “It doesn’t matter for some of us,” retorted Thomas, quick as a flash.
    Mickaël just laughed and walked away. Slightly tubby, with jet-black hair, he always wore a crafty look. His results were perfectly decent, although I suspected he took it fairly easy. Several times I had gone into his office unannounced. Each time he had given the impression he was absorbed in a candidate’s tricky case on his computer, but the images on his